If you’re familiar with only one watch designer, it’s probably Gerald Genta. He’s renowned for prestigious icons such as the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus, which introduced the concept of a luxury-lifestyle sport watch to the world. But even most seasoned enthusiasts don’t realize how he’s influenced the watch industry in other, quieter ways.
Genta claimed in a 2009 interview to have designed “at least 100,000 different watches” over the course of his career. Hyperbole or not, it makes you want to see some of them, no? A Gerald Genta-designed Seiko or Rolex? This must pique your curiosity.
Any watch designed by Gerald Genta should be of interest to enthusiasts and collectors — even those without the distinctive looks of his recognized masterpieces. A handful of other watches that are commonly known as Genta’s work include the 1976 IWC Ingenieur, the 1959 Omega Constellation “Pie Pan,” the 1985 Cartier Pasha and the 1977 Bulgari Bulgari. His 1954 Polerouter for Universal Geneve belongs among his most celebrated designs.
Unfortunately, however, much of his work is hard to positively identify. It’s widely quoted, for example, that he designed a digital watch for Timex that saw production of around 30,000,000 units, but exactly which model that is, unfortunately, remains unconfirmed. Of course, Genta also started a couple of his own brands that produced watches with his name on the dials — but that’s yet another story.
The way watch design and the industry typically works, now and historically, can make it hard to say such and such a watch was designed by so and so. Most watch designers work in anonymity, and the same was true of Genta for much of his freelance career. He wasn’t known as the designer of the Royal Oak, for example, until later.
In the early days, at least the way Genta’s wife tells it, it almost sounds as if he hawked designs on the Swiss streets for 10 or 15 CHF: “He used to take his car and go to La Chaux-de-Fonds or Bien or Le Brassus. And he said the people opened a little window and asked what he had and they would choose five, six, 10 or 20 designs and he would come home when he had CHF1,000.”
Rather than designing a single watch from the ground up, he sometimes worked on disparate elements as well. Genta himself explained: “for example, my direct client wasn’t Omega, but Omega’s suppliers and it was in this manner that I participated in the creation of the Seamaster, or of the Constellation, for example by designing the case for the one, or designing a dial or a bracelet for another.”
While we can’t delve into every last watch this prolific designer is responsible for, below is a sampling of five models that range from elegant to offbeat and illustrate his eclectic talents.
